Chopin's Funeral

Rating:
Summary: Passionate, contemporary biography of Chopin
Review: A richly textured and artfully compressed biography filled with family violence, political passions, dependencies and pride. Eisler has created a vivid portrait of the man who was blessed with musical genius and success -- and the love for the infamous woman novelist George Sand. Chopin was revered by contemporaries such as Schumann and Liszt, and after an early success dwindled away to a very unhappy demise.

Not much new territory here, but Benita Eisler has made a contemporary biography that truly brings Chopin's life to light in a book that is both compelling and creative. A recommended read.

Rating:
Summary: The Funeral March
Review: As I consider Ferderick Chopin to be my favorite composer, I was struck by the idea of this book - a biography that greatly focuses on Chopin's later years. Benita Eisler allows for some cursory background knowledge of Chopin's family and upbringing, but recounts his time spent in Paris, his affair with George Sand, and his eventual demise due to consumption. Her scant biography is a quick-paced, easy read.

"Chopin's Funeral" paints an almost "rakish" picture of the slight composer. Eisler talks of his love for fashion and fashionable decorating, that is in contrast to his profession and earnings. She tells of his relationship with the writer Sand, how the affair started and ended, and the impact it had on both. (To Sand it seems to have been just another affair, while to Chopin it was possibly the love of his life.)

Eisler is much more empathetic when it comes to Chopin's sheer genius at composing, and how admired he was by his contemporaries (including Franz Liszt). Yet it seems to be the plight of genius composers that they never achieve the success they were destined to until after their untimely death. Chopin has left the world an incredible legacy of melancholic music that tugs at the heartstrings. His inventions were ground-breaking at the time and worthy of much more adoration than he received. And Eisler speaks with knowledge on many of Chopin's compositions. While an informative read, "Chopin's Funeral" is much too small to give a balanced and complete look at the life of Frederick Chopin. It leaves the reader wanting to know more and we must seek it from another source.

Rating:
Summary: The Funeral March
Review: As I consider Ferderick Chopin to be my favorite composer, I was struck by the idea of this book - a biography that greatly focuses on Chopin's later years. Benita Eisler allows for some cursory background knowledge of Chopin's family and upbringing, but recounts his time spent in Paris, his affair with George Sand, and his eventual demise due to consumption. Her scant biography is a quick-paced, easy read.

"Chopin's Funeral" paints an almost "rakish" picture of the slight composer. Eisler talks of his love for fashion and fashionable decorating, that is in contrast to his profession and earnings. She tells of his relationship with the writer Sand, how the affair started and ended, and the impact it had on both. (To Sand it seems to have been just another affair, while to Chopin it was possibly the love of his life.)

Eisler is much more empathetic when it comes to Chopin's sheer genius at composing, and how admired he was by his contemporaries (including Franz Liszt). Yet it seems to be the plight of genius composers that they never achieve the success they were destined to until after their untimely death. Chopin has left the world an incredible legacy of melancholic music that tugs at the heartstrings. His inventions were ground-breaking at the time and worthy of much more adoration than he received. And Eisler speaks with knowledge on many of Chopin's compositions. While an informative read, "Chopin's Funeral" is much too small to give a balanced and complete look at the life of Frederick Chopin. It leaves the reader wanting to know more and we must seek it from another source.

Rating:
Summary: A Portion of His Brief Life
Review: Author Benita Eisler presents a slice of this great composer's all too brief life in her new book, "Chopin's Funeral". This is a very enjoyable book that will best be appreciated by persons that already have a familiarity with his work and life, and are as interested in commentary on specific compositions as they are on the man himself. The book also includes peers of Chopin's like List and Berlioz, and the story is also dominated by Chopin's tumultuous relationship with the writer George Sand.

The book is fairly brief and whether or not it will be a favorite read of a given person will largely depend on what knowledge you are hoping to gain. Mine was limited on Chopin prior to this book, so for me too much time was spent on reviews of specific pieces. If this is one of many Chopin biographies you have read you will likely be well rewarded. I found the author's comments on his compositions to be too lengthy in a comparatively short book, and they are clearly written by a lover of Chopin. I found them florid in their style, "proto-impressionist, light-filled buoyancy, chromatic tag, a sensuous pleasure", that go on for paragraph after paragraph and occupy a good deal of this short work. These are not expositions of what he created as opposed to rave reviews.

The book is very good. Just how well it will be for a given person will depend on what you already bring with you prior to this read.

Rating:
Summary: A gem of a book
Review: Benita Eisler had written a concise and powerful book about the life of Frederic Chopin, including his loves, his music and his friends. Beginning with a colorful account of Chopin's funeral, the author then begins to weave together a tormented picture of him. His many illnesses, the distance from those he loved, his constant need for funds....all describe a life of unbelievable turmoil. Eisner is able to capture the essence of Chopin brilliantly and relate it to the reader with strokes of understanding and compassion.

While Chopin's relationship with George Sand has been well-documented over the years, the author, nonetheless, gives an emotional portrayal of their lives together...and apart. It is the central part of this book, as it should be. But how many readers know the influence that Sand's children had on him....especially Solange? Chopin relied heavily on both women but it was Solange who comforted him at the composer's end.

As a pianist, I enjoyed Eisner's brief and occasional comments on Chopin's compositions. They always seemed to complement her narrative and they were never too weighty to drag down any chapter. Her writing style is often brisk but not in any way capricious. The "photo" taken of Chopin towards the end of his life says it all. A man barely five feet tall, weighing little by a body wracked with suffering....a man in this condition who could still write some of the most expansive music. Eisner secures it all...she allows the reader to have great empathy and awe for Chopin.

It's a rare occurrence that a dust jacket adds so much to the book. It's really designed to give the look and feel of a first edition classic. Eisner's "Chopin's Funeral" is a highly recommended, thoroughly enjoyable book.

Rating:
Summary: Chopin In Paris
Review: Eisler's biography is a short (200 pp), well-written, intimate, and moving portrait of composer Frederic Chopin's life in Paris, where he lived from 1831 (age 21) until his death from tuberculosis in 1849. During this time Chopin's private life centered around the notoriously famous woman novelist George Sand, who served as lover, muse, companion, nurse, and substitute mother to the physically weak and emotionally needy composer. The dynamics of this "celebrity" relationship - as spectacular and popular back then as anything in today's tabloids - are traced with empathy and clarity by the biographer, and related in an interesting and defensible way to the works of both participants.

As a biographer, Eisler brings out the positive and the negative traits and behaviors of Chopin and Sand, both as individuals and as participants in the relationship, in such a way that the reader gets to know these troubled, yet fascinating and brilliant, characters as three-dimensional people with all their faults and virtues. By the end of the book, I felt that I had begun to know Chopin and Sand as a friend or close acquaintance might, that is, by feeling and instinct as well as factual knowledge.

Eisler manages to accomplish this feat of empathy while sticking closely to the known facts of her subjects' lives, inventing little, and declining the temptation to flights of theoretical interpretation. The reader is shown everything, and allowed to allocate his or her sympathies where he or she will. The result is a biography which, while it does not break new ground in scholarship, did touch me and acquaint me with the human dimension of these lives.

Rating:
Summary: The unromantic daily lives of two pillars of romanticism.
Review: Focusing on the last fifteen years of Frederic Chopin's life, this biography of the composer shows how his relationship with the "liberated" author George Sand, her household, and her children dominated Chopin's life in France from shortly after his arrival there in 1831 until his death from tuberculosis in 1849. Carefully researched and footnoted, the biography describes this unlikely relationship, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes strained, either from Chopin's increasing debilitation from his devastating illness or from Sand's promiscuity and desire for excitement.

Confining herself to those details which can be historically verified, author Eisler documents her vivid account of their life together primarily through references to the letters of the participants and eyewitness accounts. Unlike writers of fictionalized biography, she presents the facts and avoids drawing conclusions, even when they seem obvious to the lay reader. The one arena in which she allows herself some imaginative leeway is in analyzing some of the creative works of Chopin and Sand, relating them to events in their lives. For Chopin she suggests that the mood or form of a work might be related to particular events or circumstances, while for Sand she suggests that it might be the subject matter itself.

Straightforward and scholarly, the biography presents facts, rather then bringing events to life, and while some insight can be gained into the participants from their letters, there are some gaps in the historical record which sometimes leave the reader wishing for more transitions, especially as the Chopin/Sand relationship deteriorates and eventually ends. While music history scholars may be familiar with much of this material, Eisler's story is, for the novice, a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of these romantic artists, their friends, and patrons in Paris near the mid-point of the 19th century. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: The unromantic daily lives of two pillars of romanticism.
Review: Focusing on the last fifteen years of Frederic Chopin's life, this biography of the composer shows how his relationship with the "liberated" author George Sand, her household, and her children dominated Chopin's life in France from shortly after his arrival there in 1831 until his death from tuberculosis in 1849. Carefully researched and footnoted, the biography describes this unlikely relationship, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes strained, either from Chopin's increasing debilitation from his devastating illness or from Sand's promiscuity and desire for excitement.

Confining herself to those details which can be historically verified, author Eisler documents her vivid account of their life together primarily through references to the letters of the participants and eyewitness accounts. Unlike writers of fictionalized biography, she presents the facts and avoids drawing conclusions, even when they seem obvious to the lay reader. The one arena in which she allows herself some imaginative leeway is in analyzing some of the creative works of Chopin and Sand, relating them to events in their lives. For Chopin she suggests that the mood or form of a work might be related to particular events or circumstances, while for Sand she suggests that it might be the subject matter itself.

Straightforward and scholarly, the biography presents facts, rather then bringing events to life, and while some insight can be gained into the participants from their letters, there are some gaps in the historical record which sometimes leave the reader wishing for more transitions, especially as the Chopin/Sand relationship deteriorates and eventually ends. While music history scholars may be familiar with much of this material, Eisler's story is, for the novice, a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of these romantic artists, their friends, and patrons in Paris near the mid-point of the 19th century. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: Chopin and Sand "Lite"
Review: I was disappointed by this book. Its title and slight size might suggest that it deals almost exclusively with Chopin's last days and burial. Not so. Eisler's description of Chopin's funeral comprises the first nine pages of this book. Another two at the end tell of Chopin's last minutes. (She sheds no new light on either event.) In between, you will find a Reader's Digest version of Chopin's life with particular emphasis on his relationship with George Sand. The book ends when Chopin does: the aftermath of his demise, it's effects on those around him, are not discussed.

I assume the author's intent was to quickly distill the couple's relationship so that she could speculate on it's unraveling. But the pair's quirky "association" lasted for twenty-one years. So this abridgement leaves much to be desired.

If you want a brief recap of the Chopin-Sand story, or are totally unfamiliar with their singular relationship, I suppose this book wouldn't be a bad place to start. However, it's not written particularly well. The convoluted, ungainly sentences were difficult to forgive after a while. If you want a better written and more detailed book on the composer, I recommend "Chopin in Paris" by Tad Szulc.

Rating:
Summary: enjoyable
Review: very nice book to read. it flows pretty nicely, especially if u don't know music history that well. it's a biography with a story behind it. it doesnt require a special music knowledge.